As the media continues to exploit tragic maternal deaths by blaming them on pro-life laws, it’s trying a new tactic: twisting words and using false, inflammatory language to mislead and deceive.
This is evident in a recent article by KVUE Houston about the death of 35-year-old Porsha Ngumezi, who was offered a treatment for miscarriage that did not resolve her situation; instead, it exacerbated her hemorrhaging and led to her death. Though Ngumezi had miscarried her preborn baby — the baby did not have a heartbeat when she reported to the hospital — the KVUE headline claims she died “after being denied abortion-related care.”
Though medical terminology often labels a miscarriage as “spontaneous abortion,” this phrase is never used colloquially; in this case, it is simply dishonest to portray any of Ngumezi’s treatment as “abortion-related.” It appears to be a blatant attempt to distort language in an attempt to blame pro-life laws for Ngumezi’s death. In actuality, while the drug Ngumezi received is commonly used as part of the abortion pill regimen, it is also commonly used to help complete a miscarriage — and it was administered for that very purpose in Ngumezi’s case.
Let’s be clear: abortion had nothing to do with Ngumezi’s death, and she did not die because she was denied “abortion-related care”; she died because she received inadequate miscarriage treatment.
Miscarriage treatment is not induced abortion
The ProPublica article which first broke Ngumezi’s story emphasized that doctors who reviewed the details of her case claimed she needed a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure to remove the remains of her preborn child. This (as well as the misoprostol that was administered) would be considered standard (and very much legal) miscarriage care.
However, because a D&C technique can also be used as a first-trimester surgical abortion procedure (during which a still-living child is intentionally killed), abortion proponents often liken it to an abortion — but it’s not. A D&C intentionally kills a living child in an abortion procedure. A D&C removes an already deceased child who died accidentally when used for miscarriage care.
Medical instruments can be used to either harm or heal (after all, one could wield a scalpel as a weapon, or as an instrument of surgical precision).
For example, forceps were once used fairly commonly to assist laboring mothers with the vaginal deliveries of their babies, though they are rarely used today. However, forceps can also be used to remove a preborn baby from the womb in the second trimester by grasping his limbs and then dismembering him piece by piece. Though the same instrument — forceps — is used to remove the baby from the womb/birth canal in both scenarios, obviously the intent is entirely different. Referring to a forceps delivery an “abortion” or “abortion-related” would be equally as absurd as KVUE labeling miscarriage care “abortion-related” care.
The same goes for using dilation and curettage (D&C) — it can kill and remove a living baby from the womb during an induced abortion, and it can also remove the remains of an accidentally miscarried child from the womb during miscarriage care. It isn’t the specific instrument or technique that is illegal with a D&C; it is the reason and intent for the D&C.
It is understood that abortion carries the intent to kill, and it is defined as such in pro-life state laws. But you won’t hear that from the mainstream media.
It seems there may be a number of reasons why Ngumezi did not receive a D&C, but none of them have anything to do with the state’s law protecting preborn children who are alive in the womb from being intentionally killed via that particular method.
Cruel and insensitive to women who have miscarried
Women have commented numerous times how painful it was to obtain their medical records for a miscarriage only to see the words, “spontaneous abortion.” This has hurt and confused women needlessly; some have suffered unnecessary guilt after the fact, shocked that years later, they are being told that they aborted their children.
This is, of course, not the case. A natural miscarriage is an accidental death of a preborn child; it is not sought out and intended by the mother or a hired abortionist.
Actress Gina Carano even recently went public about a miscarriage she suffered and her subsequent confusion; at three months, her doctor could not detect her preborn baby’s heartbeat and surgery became necessary. But she was still racked with guilt. She discussed this on a recent podcast, as reported by Live Action News:
Carano described a post-surgery experience where she woke up and heard her surgical team laughing about something unrelated, but in her time of grief, it felt harsh to her. She doubted for a time that it was a miscarriage, and wondered if perhaps she had actually had an abortion.
“And I struggled with that because I felt, is that abortion? Is that, you know…? And it tore me to pieces. And I actually woke up on the operating table while right when it happened, like, I felt like that motherly… instinct woke up, and it was like they were all laughing and, like, hanging out like normal surgery,” Carano continued.
“But for me… I was so just heartbroken and didn’t understand if that was an abortion or was it a miscarriage, and… you know, and the doctor told me, no, this is not an abortion. This is, you know, there is no heartbeat, and we have to take those cysts out,” she said. “And that was what was given to me. But it took me a long time to kind of just give that to God….”
Thankfully, Carano had an honest practitioner who knew the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion, and told her so.
Allowing any woman to live with false guilt, thinking she had an abortion when she did not, is simply cruel. But that doesn’t really seem to matter to abortion proponents; the more women they can fool into thinking they had “abortions” when they actually had a D&C for a natural miscarriage, the better, because then women will begin to equate the intentional killing of preborn children with “lifesaving care” needed to help women with miscarriages.
It’s entirely false. And it’s intentional.
The more the industry and its allies can promote abortion, the better off the industry’s bottom line.
Texas law does not prohibit miscarriage care — and the abortion industry knows it
Despite what the KVUE article (and others like it) states, miscarriage care is completely legal in the state of Texas. Texas law protects preborn children from abortion, which is the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child. There is no law that prohibits care for a woman after the child is already dead — and to claim that there is is completely nonsensical. This is how Texas law defines “abortion”:
“Abortion” means the act of using or prescribing an instrument, a drug, a medicine, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant.
The term does not include birth control devices or oral contraceptives.
An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to: (A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child; (B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or (C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.
Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood know that miscarriage care is not prohibited by law.
In an exposé published in June, Live Action researcher Carole Novielli found that Planned Parenthood facilities were offering miscarriage care in 11 of the 14 states that have the most pro-life protections in place, including right in Houston, where Ngumezi died. Incidentally, these statements offering “miscarriage management” now appear to have been scrubbed from the Planned Parenthood websites — almost as if the abortion giant is changing its narrative to fit the media’s deceptive bias once again, just as it scrubbed its website of the fact that ectopic pregnancy treatments are not abortions.
Though it appears that Planned Parenthood may no longer be offering “miscarriage care” or “miscarriage management” at all of its Texas locations, it had no problem advertising them five months ago, when the Texas law was the same as it is today. If miscarriage care were the same as abortion or “abortion-related care,” Planned Parenthood wouldn’t have been able to legally offer it in Texas or promote it online as a service.
The media is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to claim that the direct and intentional killing of preborn children is somehow necessary for a mother’s health and survival. In reality, all these tragic stories continue to do is underscore that pregnant women deserve better healthcare from physicians who take their concerns seriously.
Call on President Trump to pardon the FACE Act prisoners on his first day in office.